If I remember well, the Kaby Lake cpu's die is smaller than Sky LAke, so the heat is transferred less efficiently

yeah! and also lapping help a bit!

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From what I remember, both i7-7700K & i7-6700K have exactly same die size (122 mm²). But the Heat Spreader on Skylake is a bit thicker. See also the Bitspower Skylake variants who is designed for both Intel Skylake & Kabylake CPU.

Switch lid. Use your 6700K lid instead of the one on Kaby if you still have your chips. Or buy Skylake Bitspower IHS.

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I didn't know this.. Unfortunately I don't have my 6700K lid or cpu (Sold it off already!).. Is buying the Bitspower IHS directly from Bitspower website the way to go or is there an USA distributor with them?

I didn't know this.. Unfortunately I don't have my 6700K lid or cpu (Sold it off already!).. Is buying the Bitspower IHS directly from Bitspower website the way to go or is there an USA distributor with them?

So this used to be a common issue with the windows 10 recovery environment. I had this issue on of original samsung NVME drives in my alienware and if I remember correctly the fix was to change the Sata operation in Bios and make sure there no other SATA drives enabled.
Go into BIOS
Navigate to boot, make sure it is UEFI
Go to SATA operation and set it to AHCI
Then I think in Advanced or Advanced boot or something like that enable legacy ROM options
Then disable secure boot

I think @cavell219 's instructions will work.
Most likely, when the drive was removed, the Bios probably bugged out because there was no longer a nvme drive, and switched one of the options back somehow.

Please PM me if cavell's fix does not work.
P.S. are you using the STOCK BIOS or the UNLOCKED BIOS or Prema Bios? (do you have access to advanced bios settings that are normally not available?)

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Thanks guys for your help. Cavell's suggestion worked. Apparently BIOS reset the sata mode from AHCI to Intel's option, and made the drives unreadable. Switched it back and all is good now. Thank you!

OK this might be a bit of a rant, not sure if this is against the rules but hey, I need to let this one out.

I'm facing a very strange bug, on boot up with a cold start in the morning after like 6-7 hours of needed sleep, the screen is black but only I can see the mouse pointer moving around the screen, usually I do a hard reset of the laptop to restart it again then it just works fine.

This is very annoying to me especially since this machine is brand new less than a year old, very expensive and it has some really STRANGE bugs.....first 120hz screens had those brightness issues, then CPU fans dying, now this strange bug at cold start first thing in the morning.....sometimes and only SOMETIMES I come back from grocery shopping and the screen is black, not even mouse pointer is present, laptop still working fine, clicking mouse or keyboard key bashing doesn't yield any response, have to hard reset it. It irks me, but I also can't deny how great the performance of this laptop is, it's like having a beautiful wife/girlfriend but she just likes to bother you and tease you to unspecified limits....

This is very annoying to me especially since this machine is brand new less than a year old, very expensive and it has some really STRANGE bugs.....Now this strange bug at cold start first thing in the morning.....sometimes and only SOMETIMES I come back from grocery shopping and the screen is black, not even mouse pointer is present, laptop still working fine, clicking mouse or keyboard key bashing doesn't yield any response, have to hard reset it. It irks me, but I also can't deny how great the performance of this laptop is, it's like having a beautiful wife/girlfriend but she just likes to bother you and tease you to unspecified limits....